Referees Cost the Chargers Another One

I for one am getting pretty sick of not being able to review “incomplete passes”. This refusal to use the replay technology in these situations is absolute horse-shit. Anthony Gonzalez caught a quick pass in the fourth quarter and fumbled, which would’ve been returned for a touchdown. The Chargers have beaten themselves this entire season, but the referees have definitely transformed some of our W’s in to L’s.

The Chargers’ offense gave a pretty miserable performance in the first three quarters of the game and again decided to show up in the fourth quarter. Like clockwork the Chargers marched down the field and sputtered after they hit the two minute warning and couldn’t get in to the endzone. Fortunately Philip did not fumble or throw an interception in the redzone this time, but they did manage to leave enough time for the opponent aka Peyton Manning, to march down to field goal range. The Chargers actually stopped them on 3rd down, but the Referees decided to get involved again, and awarded the Colts with a five minute review timeout which was VERY suspect. The Chargers surely would have lost it in overtime, but it would have been nice if they had lost this one without the help of the referees’ suspect timeout on fourth down with twenty-four seconds on the cock and no timeouts, while the clock was ticking.

In a ratings driven market, the Chargers will have to be good enough in 2009 to beat the referees and the opponents. In all seriousness, the NFL should seriously reexamine this rule and make the appropriate changes because a lot of people are beginning to question the “integrity” of the officiating including me.